FDE halts regularisation of daily-wage employees

The FDE summons a list of such employees from the educational institutions to scrutinise them for the seventh time


Our Correspondents April 08, 2019
PHOTO: AFP

ISLAMABAD/RAWALPINDI: Despite directions from parliamentary bodies, the court and even the education ministry, the top education body in the federal capital has decided to halt the regularisation process for daily-wage employees in the schools and colleges of the city.

Instead, the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) has summoned a list of all such employees from the educational institutions to scrutinise them for the seventh time.

FDE records suggest that the body is delaying the process of regularising daily-wage employees in federal education institutions where as many as 1,790 teaching and non-teaching daily-wage employees have been demanding regularisation for almost a decade.

Earlier, a division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) headed by Justice Aamer Farooq had ordered on June 22, 2018, to make all daily-wage staff in federal educational institutions up to basic pay scale (BPS) grade 15 permanent, including all those employees regularised by a committee led by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmaker Khursheed Shah.

Moreover, the court had further directed that permanent employees would have to join their respective institutions within three months.

It had been further directed that the case of regularizing and promoting employees from BPS-I to BPS-15 should be sent to the federal cabinet so the move could be formalised.

Sources in the education ministry said that all codal formalities had been set aside when up to 100,000 employees were regularised on the instructions of a special cabinet committee.

However, the government’s counsel and the department kept emphasising on the fulfilling all codal formalities when the case was proceeding in the IHC.

He added that the court also termed the employees, regularised by Khursheed Shah’s committee (cabinet committee) the “past and close transactions” and had directed that posting orders should be issued within 90 days and wrote a separate paragraph in its verdict but it barred the government from sending their cases to the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) because the cases which were not presented before the cabinet committee were sent to FPSC.

Insaf afternoon programme

To improve enrollment of students, especially in the limited space of government schools, the government has decided to launch 1,050 afternoon schools under the Insaf Afternoon Programme.

Students who enrol into this programme will receive free course books and uniforms.

According to the programme, afternoon shifts in schools will ensure the enrollment of children between five to 15 years-of-age, especially out-of-school children.

Under the programme, as many as 700 primary schools in villages of 22 districts of Punjab will convert into middle schools during the afternoon shift. These districts either did not have middle schools or had too few of them.

Similarly, 350 middle schools will operate as high schools in the second shift. These schools will accommodate up to 100 students each.

The middle schools will have a headmaster, two teachers and two BPS-4 employees. The ninth and tenth grades will have a headmaster, four teachers and two BPS-4employees.

Apart from a monthly salary, the headmaster, teachers and employees of middle schools will receive an honorarium of Rs18,000; Rs15,000 and Rs7,000 respectively.  Similarly, for high schools, the honorarium will be Rs20,000, Rs18,000 and Rs7,000 respectively.

Newspaper ban

The education ministry has decided to ban newspapers in the ministry as part of its austerity drive. The ban has halted the practice of taking action on matters which have been highlighted in news reports.

Similarly, the Press Relation Officer (PRO) of the ministry has deleted the WhatsApp reporters group which had been formed on the directions of the prime minister.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8th, 2019.

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